


Contretemps

by Strigimorphaes



Category: RWBY
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pre-Canon, Sage and Scarlet are only mentioned...., SeaMonkeys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 04:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2136318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strigimorphaes/pseuds/Strigimorphaes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Contretemps, noun: "an inopportune or embarrassing occurrence or situation."</p><p>Set before the start of RWBY where Neptune's hair isn't blue yet, Sun is pining and that's all about to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contretemps

**Author's Note:**

> First RWBY fic! I really don't know how well this fits with canon but I don't care and I suggest you don't worry either. I'm going by the idea that Sun and Nep knew each other way before Beacon.

Sun woke up uncharacteristically early. The room was too light to sleep in, the noise from the other side of the wall too sudden and sporadic to ignore, and grudgingly he sat up and peered over the edge of his bed. The top bunk gave a good view of the room, and the fact that it lacked a ladder was not a drawback for the faunus. He found nobody else awake - Scarlet and Sage were both fast asleep - except for Neptune, who had always been the earliest riser on the team.  
Sun sat still for a while, just watching. It wasn’t the first time he had gotten distracted just by Neptune’s presence. In fact, he had been watching Neptune for a while, even before they came to Beacon, back when Sun had perched on top of bookcases or in the thick branches of trees, looked when he should have been sleeping. Or when he should have been studying, which had had a negative effect on his grades more than once. At first Sun was just intrigued - or annoyed, he wasn’t sure which - by the self proclaimed intellectual who competed with Sun for the attention of the girls, looked kind of good and spent all that time in the bathroom every morning fixing up his weird brownish hair. Now, Sun knew that he definitely had an ugly, old-fashioned schoolgirl-crush on his friend, but he also knew that in all the time he had been looking at Neptune from afar, not a single one of the subjects of Neptune’s flirtations and been male. And so, he decided to do nothing about it, which soon proved to be frustrating - especially when they came to Beacon.  
Sun turned over on his side and decided he had to find _some_ way to get rid of his frustrations during the day. Beneath him, Neptune thought he was the only one awake and was getting dressed, taking off his shirt and allowing Sun a full view of his back and his muscles and his bare skin and… Sun felt like hitting himself, but didn’t. Instead he put on the t-shirt he had left on the edge of his bed and jumped down, landing as quietly as he could in front of Neptune. His tail whipped around him as he regained his balance, still unnoticed.  
“Boo!” he whispered.  
“Whoa! ‘Morning,” Neptune said. He slowly zipped up his jacket and spoke quietly, nodding towards their two sleeping team members. “You’re up early.”  
Sun shrugged. “It happens,” he said. “You seen my white shirt? Not the one with the collar, the one with the buttons?”  
“In the pile over there.”  
As soon as Sun had retrieved it, he flashed his most grateful smile, ready to retreat into the bathroom and shower and stop thinking about his shirtless team mate when Neptune continued with an exasperated smile. “Remember that I’m neither your boyfriend nor your mom, okay?”  
Sun didn’t answer. He just locked the door behind him and sighed. Frustration.  
The room was small, but uncluttered apart from the different bottles of soap and shampoo in their shower stall. Sun undressed and let the cool water wash over him, enjoying the privacy of the locked room. As he stepped out onto the cold floor afterwards and inspected his face and hair in the mirror, he noticed something new by the sink - a small bottle of something, accompanied by a small box. As he held it up in the fluorescent light, he saw that it was hair dye, and while he got dressed he wondered. Who on his team would want to become artificially supermodel-blonde? _Probably Scarlet, he decided_.  
Then, Sun thought he had found the perfect occasion for some stress relief.  
The first thing he had to do was get through the first two classes of the day, which was easier said than done considering how hard it was to stay awake. Then, he had to find a fitting excuse to sneak away during lunch break and finally, to get back into his dorm when no one else was there, which meant it had to be during a lesson. Afterwards he felt like he had had a very productive school day, if not for having been a good student, then for having done all of these things.  
His reward would come soon enough.  
  
After the final lesson of the day, Sun went back to the dorm and pulled out his schoolbooks. Patience is the prankster’s greatest virtue, he reminded himself, his eyes glazing over pictures of combat stances and human anatomy. His team members went in and out of the room, Neptune included. Once in awhile one of them lingered in the bathroom, but it had to become evening, the sky outside a deep orange and Sun half-asleep, before Sun heard the sound he had been waiting for.  
“What the fuck?!”  
Sun allowed himself a moment of pure satisfaction over a smoothly executed plan before realizing that hey, that was not Scarlet’s voice. He found the bathroom door unlocked, opened it and stared directly at Neptune, whose hair was mostly a blue mess and whose facial expression was one for the ages. Sun tried not to laugh. He failed when Neptune turned towards him and blurted out, “Why would you _do_ this, Sun?!” He ran his fingers through his hair and looked from his hand to Sun and back again, quietly repeating himself. “Why would you do this?”  
“Why would you want to dye your hair 'Natural Pearl'-blonde?” Sun managed to say between bursts of laughter. He was torn between the hilarity of the situation - his normally so calm companion this upset! - and the fear of making Neptune honestly mad at him.  
“It was getting darker and I hear girls are suckers for blondes, right? I mean, I guess you’d know but- “ Neptune trailed off, and Sun was seconds away from some remark about not wanting girls at all, just Neptune, but he held it back. “Do I really look so ridiculous?”  
“...Not really?” The colour wasn’t all bad, actually. Unexpected, but not ugly. “Anyway, I have the box over here somewhere if you want to know how to get it out… But you really ought to let the other guys see you first.” Sun didn't normally let his 'victims' off that easily, but he was willing to make an exception. The closet where he had stored the evidence was on the other side of the bathroom, a distance that seemed very large at the moment. He smiled from ear to ear as he edged his way around Neptune.  
“Yeah. That’d be real nice, dumbass.”  
Sun was reassured by the playful tone still present in Neptune’s voice, but it distracted him even as he felt cold water seep through his socks. It wasn’t until it was too late he noticed just how slippery the floor had gotten.  
Inches away from the closet, Sun did something he hadn’t done in a long while. He fell. Even a faunus’ balance could not save him from gravity, and his back hit the cold, wet tiles, his head narrowly missing colliding with the toilet, his tail caught in an unpleasant position under him. And in between the uncoordinated flailing, his hands were moving with a mind of their own, pulling Neptune with him down into a tangle of limbs on the floor. For a moment Sun just stayed still, staring up into the bright ceiling light, cursing internally.  
He could feel Neptune’s weight on top of him and he could smell skin and shampoo and leftover chemicals. He was so dangerously close, and Sun didn’t want to be the first one to pull away. Neptune sat up slowly with one leg on either side of Sun’s body, concentrating his weight squarely on Sun’s hips. It was hard to make sure in the harsh lighting, but Sun thought he could see a blush on the other boy’s face.  
When Neptune spoke, he seemed to be just as surprised as Sun.  
“If I wasn’t mad at you right now, I think I’d kiss you.”  
“I’d like that.”  
They were both silent for a torturously long moment, as if daring each other to move first. Slowly, Sun grabbed Neptune by the shirt and pulled him close again. There was no resistance, and Sun’s head was filled with nothing but a chorus of _finally, finally, finally_ as their lips met. It wasn't the kiss of his wilder dreams - it wouldn't belong in any novel - but it was irrefutably real and tangible, something Sun had previously only imagined. Soft and warm and wet.  
Neptune pulled back first, not looking so angry anymore. Still, an aura of doubt lingered about him. He stood up, and Sun missed his weight for a moment before maneuvering himself into a sitting position.  
“I think I’m going to… go somewhere else real quick.” The blush on his face had intensified, but Sun didn’t get to enjoy the sight: Neptune was gone before Sun could even get a word in edgewise. For a while, the faunus sat alone, playing with his tail and just letting the water seep into his clothes wherever. A mixture of happiness and doubt washed over him in waves, and if he closed his eyes, he could have imagined himself at the ocean.

In the end, doubt won. While he saw Neptune, it was only in glimpses, and there was an undercurrent of did _I do anything wrong_ and _why won’t he see me_. Nothing proved a distraction - not the giggling girls, not the his weapons, not even sleep. There was no in-between in his mind where every thought was either I fucked up or fucking finally, and he went as far to distract himself that he went to the library, writing overdue essays and assignments and drawing his namesake in the margins of his notes. When he heard laughter behind him, he turned around, hoping it would be someone he knew doing something he could join in on. In a way, it was.  
Thanks to the lax dress code of Beacon Academy, Neptune didn't stick out as much as he could have, being surrounded by various shades of hair with various overdone accessories, but he was still very noticeable. His hair was less messy, the colour evenly divided and faded into something resembling the blue of the sky outside. He leant against the table next to Sun, placing his gun beside him with a heavy thud. There was relief in Sun’s sigh as he pushed the book away and faced his maybe-friend. He was even more relieved when Neptune spoke first.  
"So, um. Hey.. What're you doing?" he asked. The was no anger in his voice, and that alone made Sun optimistic.  
"Nothing really. I- I mean, It's been two days since we..."  
"About that," Neptune said, looking everywhere but Sun, "Noticed something new?"  
"Not really, no."  
"Exactly." He pointed towards his hair. "Still blue."  
"Thanks, _captain obvious_." Despite his harsh tone of voice, a smile had crept onto Sun's face and he was positive that someone had replaced his intestines with live, fluttering animals. "You're gonna keep it?"  
"I think so. Might as well, you know? You only live once.”  
Sun laughed, prompting a chorus of “Shh!” and “Be quiet!” from the rest of the library. “You said YOLO,” he explained, watching as Neptune took on an entirely different facial expression.  
“Seriously?” Neptune sighed softly before he continued, “Anyway, if you don’t like it, remember that you only have yourself to blame for this.”  
“On the contrary… The girls may not like it,” Sun admitted, “But I do.”  
“You’d be wrong about that, Sun. The girls love it. They’re just - “ Neptune made a sweeping gesture, “flinging themselves at me.”  
“But they’re flinging in vain, aren’t they?” Sun asked.  
Neptune answered the question swiftly and wordlessly, a smile on his face as he drew back after the kiss. “Yeah. It’s fun, though.”  
His attention was then drawn to the notes in front of Sun. "Now that you might be able to focus a bit better on your schoolwork," he then said, "I think we need to work a bit on your studying. Is that history?"  
As Neptune settled into the chair beside him, Sun hoped that he was right, but knew in his heart that he would probably always be easily distracted.


End file.
